When the light faded, silence followed.
The wind cut through the ruins like a whisper, carrying the smell of ash and mana.
Lucas stumbled forward, exhausted, every step sending pain through his side. His jacket was torn, stained dark. Genesis and Requiem hung heavy in his hands, their faint hum the only sound left.
[Tutorial complete.]
[Synchronization: 100%.]
[User stable.]
He looked around. The battlefield stretched endlessly—cracked stone, broken pillars, and glowing dust where people had once stood.
Dozens of summoning circles still glimmered faintly on the ground, but most were empty.
"How many…" he muttered, voice low. "…didn't make it?"
A soft groan answered him from behind a fallen statue.
Lucas spun, weapons raised—until he heard the voice.
"Dude—don't shoot! It's me!"
A boy stumbled into the open, clutching his arm. His brown hair was matted with dust, and one lens of his cracked glasses had fallen out, but the grin on his face was unmistakable.
Lucas froze. "Noah?"
Noah Turner nodded weakly, laughing between breaths. "Holy crap, man… I thought you were dead."
Lucas lowered his weapons and crossed the rubble to him. "You're bleeding."
"Yeah, well," Noah said, wincing as he sat down, "some thing jumped me the second I spawned. Took a swing at my arm, I hit it with a rock. Classic hero stuff."
Lucas let out a shaky laugh, the first sound that didn't feel like panic. "Still an idiot."
Noah smirked. "Still quiet."
For a moment, the chaos faded, and it was just them—two kids from the same empty hallway back at Ridgefield High.
They'd met in detention three years ago—Lucas for skipping gym, Noah for arguing with a teacher about physics. Neither of them had many friends, but they'd found something steady in each other: quiet understanding. Lucas brought calm; Noah brought noise. They balanced.
And now they were here—two high school nobodies in a divine warzone.
Noah tapped the faint blue screen on his wrist, grimacing.
[Class: Support Technician (Uncommon)]
[Level: 1]
[Status: Stable (Minor Injury)]
"Support Technician," he muttered. "I get to analyze mana patterns and, uh, maybe fix broken stuff if I find the right scraps. How about you?"
Lucas hesitated. "…You don't want to know."
"Try me."
"My class broke the System."
Noah blinked. "Of course it did." He laughed—half disbelief, half hysteria. "You'd glitch the apocalypse itself, huh?"
Lucas smiled faintly. "Guess so."
The silence that followed was heavier. The plaza—the people screaming, the monsters—the weight of it all finally pressed down.
Noah stared into the fog. "Do you think everyone else is okay? I mean, back home? Our parents? The school?"
Lucas didn't answer immediately. He glanced at the sky. It wasn't blue anymore—just endless red light flickering with digital fragments, as if reality itself had been uploaded.
[Global Tutorial Phase Complete.]
The voice came from everywhere.
The ground vibrated as thousands of blue holograms appeared across the ruins—over people, over the dead, over empty summoning circles.
[World Synchronization Achieved.]
[Total Human Population Integrated: 7,921,043,812.]
[Survivor Count: 4,183,472,009.]
Noah's mouth fell open. "Half the planet… didn't make it."
Lucas just stared. He felt hollow.
[Regional Report — Sector 17: North American Trial Zones.]
[Survivors Remaining: 391,204.]
[Zone Ranking Initialization: Active.]
Blue markers flared in the sky—faint lights stretching toward the horizon, outlining distant cities.
Noah's lenses flickered. "Those are… spawn zones."
Lucas nodded slowly. "So the plaza wasn't the only one. There are dozens—maybe hundreds of cities like it."
[Announcement: Initial Placement based on Kill Count.]
[Those without a registered kill will be sent to Disciplinary Tier upon arrival.]
The holograms vanished. The world went quiet again.
Noah swallowed hard. "What does 'Disciplinary Tier' mean?"
Lucas didn't answer right away. He just looked down at the faint scorch marks beneath his boots—the ash that wasn't just monsters anymore.
"I think," he said quietly, "it means they expect us to fight each other next."
Noah's expression fell. "…You're kidding."
"I wish." Lucas reloaded his weapons, the metallic click echoing in the still air.
The wind shifted, carrying faint shouts from somewhere far beyond the ruins—other survivors, maybe, or something hunting them.
Lucas turned toward the sound, adjusting his lenses. His Uzis glowed faintly again, steady now, almost calm.
"Come on," he said softly. "We're not done yet."
Noah got up, clutching his arm but following without question. "You think we'll find others?"
"Yeah," Lucas said. "But I'm not sure if that's good or bad."
Together, they walked into the fog, the world around them slowly humming to life again—one of a thousand shattered cities where humanity's progression had just begun.